New F1 game unveiled

For those interested in the gaming side of F1, the official F1 game by Codemasters has had a revamp for 2010 and was unveiled in London this week.

The game, due out in September, will be the first official F1 game to appear on the Xbox 360 platform and will be back on PC. It is also available for Playstation. The new game is also designed for HD consoles.

The game is developed in Birmingham and uses the same proprietary technology as Colin McRae and DIRT 2.

Last year's game, the first by Codemasters after years of the contract being exclusively with Sony, has been a big hit in the Allen household on the Nintendo Wii.

My five year old is extremely proficient on it, especially around his favourite track Interlagos, where he would give Felipe Massa a run for his money. He seems to have developed a soft spot for driving Force India cars, perhaps due to the colour scheme.

I'm not much of a gamer, but I've lost count of the number of times I have toiled around to finish outside the top ten while he has made a break for it in the lead and won the race.

It's a great game for the non-expert player, the graphics for the tracks are uncannily accurate and the only criticism I would make is that the rotating front wheels look a bit naff compared to the quality of everything else. We haven't got into the finer details of car handling, which are built into the game, whereby grip levels change with rain or tyre marbles. But my youngest has certainly had a lot of fun on car damage settings, where you can knock wings and nosecones off.

I wasn't able to attend Wednesday's launch, so I haven't played the new game yet, but I've got an open invitation to go up to Codemasters and will do so before long, to take a look.

This weekend we will be doing a few laps of Albert Park to reacquaint ourselves with how it goes ahead of next Sunday's Grand Prix there. Luckily for me there are no safety cars in the game, as I would be sure to trigger one...